What's The Best Bird Seed Mix To Buy?

The best bird seed mix out there for you depends on what you want to do.

Want to keep starlings away? Offer only hard-shelled seeds: black-oil sunflower, safflower, striped sunflower, millet. Avoid peanuts, sunflower chips, suet nuggets and cracked corn at all costs.

Want to avoid grackles…have one feeder that only has safflower in it and nothing else.

Want to avoid house sparrows? That’s tough, sunflower isn’t their favorite, but at the end of the day, they’ll eat anything. On the upside, their activity attracts other birds to your feeder.

Want to avoid squirrels? Move to Mars. In all seriousness, half the battle is feeder placement combined with either a squirrel baffle or weight sensitive feeder (that really is its own blog).

This is an example of a good all purpose mix. A handful of cracked corn or millet isn’t bad, but you want your main ingredient to be sunflower seeds.

I feed something a little fancier than the above.

The Falcon Heights squirrels are either too lazy or too chonky from my neighbor’s feeders to get airborne. Most squirrels can jump five feet vertically and ten feet horizontally. My squirrel baffles are about 4 feet off the ground and even on nights when I leave a patio chair near the feeder pole, they never make the jump. This means I can feed all the fancy foods at my feeders with no mammal repercussions. Don’t tell anyone…but I don’t even have starlings so I can even feed seeds out of the shell too.

Golfinches chowing down on my custom mix of seeds.

The birds in my yard have made it clear: they like sunflower seeds. They especially like them out of the shell with side of sunflower seeds out of the shell. If I could throw in some dried mealworms that would be awesome. Oh and for the love of Pete, could I cool it with the safflower, that would be great. And since I try to avoid too many empty seed shells, I try to offer some seeds out of the shell—that makes mixes more expensive but since I’m not going out to restaurants that much or paying for parking, I have some extra cash for birdseed right now.

White-throated sparrow and fox sparrow going for extra fine sunflower chips in a hollow log that I turned into a bird feeder/photography background.

If I have a good number of native sparrows hanging around, I’ll toss some white millet on the ground. I cannot resist that huge variation of tantalizing browns found in native sparrows. I’ll buy extra fine sunflower chips and toss them far and wide. Squirrels can smell it, but the scattered chips are little reward for digging through the grass and they sniff frantically around, whereas dainty sparrow beaks can snatch them up easily.

The seed I like to offer my birds is not cheap, yet I don’t want all of my discretionary income going to bird feed. So I started cruising for for prices online, my intent was to find someone to deliver seed to me, but much like my plain sunflower post, I got caught in the vortex of general bird seed pricing. There was a time when I wouldn’t have been caught dead purchasing Ace Hardware brand seed or Kaytee brand bird seed. I remember at one point some of the seeds in Kaytee mixes had dyed seeds—think of a general bird seed mix with hot pink safflower. However, clearly sometime in the last fifteen years they’ve made better mixes and use nicer seed.

For my home yard, I want a mix of sunflowers in and out of the shell as well as some peanuts out of the shell and dried mealworms. I can’t find anyone who makes this mix. The closest I can find goes by several names: Songbird Mix, Songbird Delight, Fruit and Nut…however all of these have safflower which most of my birds leave behind with the discarded sunflower shells (Please don’t email me about how much your birds love safflower, there’s geographic food tastes and I find in my neck of the woods, safflower on it’s own in a separate feeder works great to deter grackles. Rose-breasted grosbeaks and tufted titmice especially like it but I have neither this time of year where I live in Minnesota).

So here are the wackadoodle prices that I’ve found.

Coming in at .99¢ per pound this bird store had what I could call a reasonable price.

For once, Amazon was the most insane in their pricing coming in at $2.87 per pound. Also…note that you can purchase the seed from other sellers either new or used…ew.

Another bird feeding store and this one was a ZOWIE at $2.33 per pound if I bought 30 pounds. Not only must this seed be this year’s crop but also every kernel was hand polished.

Look at this insanity from Chewy.com! It comes out to $2.23 per pound if you purchase a 20 pound bag.

I found this at Fleet Farm online which was $1.34. When I went into pick it up, it was on sale for $17.99 which came to .89¢ per pound.

Since Fleet Farm had Kaytee on sale, I bought three bags. I also saw they had a bag of Nut and Berry on sale for $15.99 (the one Chewy has for more than double so I added one of those too. I mixed them all in my metal can and have this:

It’s sunflower in and out of the shell, it’s got a variety of nuts, it has fruit…and annoyingly it has fruit flavoring mixed in and smells like cough syrup. It’s not like birds are attracted to the smell but boy howdy does it get the squirrels and raccoons’ attention.

So, like sunflower seed by itself (which is often a cheaper way to feed birds and will still get you a great variety) seed mix prices can vary wildly. Take a look around and if you were like me and thought for the last 10 - 15 years that you’ll never purchase seed from a hardware store, take another look. Also keep in mind that the bigger the bag you purchase, generally the price per pound should go down.

As always, a wild bird specialty store will certainly answer all of your questions and give a lot of good, personal customer service, but if you’re strapped for cash and want to attract birds to your yard for your family, you can find good/affordable bird seed at a hardware store these days.

What's the Best Wild Bird Food to Buy?

The short answer: As much black oil sunflower as you can afford. It will get you the most variety of birds.

If you want to know about bird feed mixes…that is a separate post.

Longer/nuanced answer below.

Blue jay on a mesh sunflower feeder. At the cabin, I have a winter flock of 15 blue jays that can clear out five pounds of sunflower seeds within six hours. My urban jays practice more restraint.

Way back when I started this blog in 2004, I worked for a wild bird seed company in the Twin Cities. I managed more than one location in my eight years there. And sure, the owners could argue that my inventory budget was higher than they liked, yet I consistently met and exceeding my store’s sale’s goals. I know bird feeding, I know how to attract birds and do it well.

Recently, with the pandemic and people getting into bird feeding and bird watching, I’m getting questions like, “Do I have to buy from a specialty store, it’s so expensive.”

Fifteen years ago, these were valid reasons why I’d tell you to purchase from a wild bird specialty store:

1. The seed is always from the most recent crop at a wild bird store and therefore the freshest where as big box stores get old seed. Nut meats shrivel over the years and if you don’t believe me, here’s a blog post where a former USDA researcher tested to see if my claims were true. If you have seed that’s two years old in your feeder and your neighbor has fresher seed, the birds will head to your neighbor’s first.

2. You can’t see the seed inside the bags and there’s no regulation on mix labels. A bag of seed can list sunflower as the first ingredient, that does not mean it’s the main seed in the mix. There could also be excessive amounts of chaff or meal moth webbing.

3. Those big companies do not understand the bird feeding market. European birds on the bag for US bird seed (you’re never getting great tits at your feeder in the US), the bags were often chock full of sorghum which is great if you have quail in the yard, but lousy if you want cardinals

Red-breasted nuthatches will take black oil sunflower, but if I have peanuts out of the shell, they will ignore the sunflower.

When I moved to a home with a yard as the pandemic kicked in, I stopped at a wild bird specialty store to get back in the game. I didn’t want to be indoors long (it was before our first lock down), I knew the seeds I wanted and I wanted out of there. When I was told what my total was, I thought, “Ouch…” Bird seed prices had increased quite a bit since the last time I purchased it. I knew the seeds I wanted to feed were on the higher end, but I don’t want to be the person spending $80 a week to feed the birds. At first, I thought there had been a rough crop year…and then someone took me on a date at a Menard’s. Yes. That’s right, a Mendard’s. Man, have I mentioned how dating in your 40s is weird?

Here’s what happened:

Him: How does this Menard's compare to others you've been too?

Me: I think the better questions is, "What do you think of Menard's now that you've been in one?"

Him: YOU'VE NEVER BEEN IN A MENARD'S???

Me: I live in an apartment, why would I go to a Men...OMFG look at that green finch poster above their bird seed, that's not a Minnesota bird. That's not even a North American bird. Oh chaffinch, hawfinch, ch, come on, European goldfinch. See that nuthatch, you're not going to get that at your feeder, because that's a European nuthatch. And that, you think that's some weird titmouse, but it's a crested tit, I almost always see them in Austria when I go. And that blue tit, never going to be at your feeder...well, I take that back, sometimes those do show up here, but that's because some bird dealer in and around Chicago keeps releasing them.

Him: I'm beginning to get a clearer picture of why you don't get many invitations to Menard's.

However, I noticed the prices and I noticed that most of the bags were clear plastic. You could see the quality of the seed. Clearly hardware stores and bird feeding companies has noticed what people want in quality bird seed and have mended their ways over the years.

I even noticed that some of the sunflower seeds looked like they were lower in chaff content. Have you ever noticed how some bags of seed are super dusty and that some bags have more plant stems? Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret. When stores or seed companies are purchasing seeds like black oil sunflower, they can get different pricing for what they will tolerate. A bag of sunflower that has more chaff in will be cheaper. If you pay a little more, the seed can go through a centrifuge process to get rid of excess chaff. If a store pays even a little bit more, a tiny bit of oil (safe for birds) is added to minimize dust and make the seed look fresh and shiny…see how things add up?

That’s not to say that you should buy any old black oilers, older seed is not going to be as attractive, but fresh seed that has a little extra oil on it it going to cost more. And that’s for our benefit, not the birds.

This comes to about $2.59 a pound. That’s nuts but this is going to be the most recent crop and probably hand shined and delivered by limo as well.

As Covid numbers are spiking again and I’m trying to do all I can to avoid being indoors, I started looking at seed delivery. When I want to get a sense for pricing from a store, I look at how much black oil sunflower prices are. It informs me of what type of price margins they’re going to charge and how much more expensive the mixes are going to be and it also gives me an idea if they’re seed is from the most recent crop or the previous year’s crop (and more prone to dust weevil and Indian meal moth infestation).

These are prices that I checked are from around December 8 - 10, 2020.

I checked Duncraft and they only sell seed in five pound bags. I spit out my coffee when I saw how much just black oil sunflower seeds were. Holy hell, how much would their mixes be??

I saw that crazy price for five pounds of sunflower and realized OK, they’re not really in the game of selling seed. They sell feeders, these are bags of seed to go along to get you started, especially if the feeder is a gift.

So I started looking elsewhere…I tried Amazon:

Well this is a hot mess. Typically, the larger quantities of seed you purchase, the cheaper the price per pound. A 10# bag comes to $1.76 per pound, a 20# bag comes to $1.50 per pound, a 25# bag is .79¢ per pound and the 50# back comes out to $1.36 per pound. I don’t have high hopes about the age of this seed.

Chewy had their’s at $1.33 per pound.

Menard’s online had it at .38¢ per pound. I’m suspecting this seed is from the previous year’s crop.

Fleet Farm got interesting. I found this bag that came out at .45¢ per pound. But then I found….

This Kaytee 20# sunflower came out at .62¢ per pound. This could be this year’s crop and one I’d risk the moth issue. Birds don’t mind moth larvae (yeah, bonus protein) but they are a mess if they get into your home.

All Seasons is offering it at .99¢ per pound for a 30 pound bag (no one in this town offers a consistent bag).

Wild Birds Unlimited is going for a 20# bag and offering it $1.24!

And then I checked wild bird specialty stores. In Minnesota we have the Wild Birds Unlimited franchises and then we have a some that are local stores like All Seasons Wild Bird Store and Cardinal Corner (they don’t even list black oil on their site for online and go straight to offering mixes). But I know with all of them, I know I’m getting this year’s crop.

What do I make of this? You can get some good sunflower and you can get some fancy sunflower. You want a big economical bag to get you through the next few months? It may not be this year’s crop, but you’ll still get cardinals.

You have no idea how to get certain species in your yard, have a squirrel problem or just getting started feeding? A wild bird specialty store will walk you through the store, answer your questions accurately with the latest information, probably remember the name of your kids and pets and ask about them the next time they see you. They will also honor warranties, repair feeders and generally give back to the community.

Hummingbird Reminder

It's the time of year when I get hummingbird questions so I thought I would do a quick reminder about hummingbird nectar. Here is the recipe:

4 parts water 1 part table sugar (not honey, not corn syrup, not Splenda, not Stevia, no artificial sweetner)

Don't bother with red dye, it's not needed, could be harmful (we don't know for certain but it's best to err on the side of caution). Your feeder should be red enough to get the hummingbirds' attention.

Mix until the sugar is dissolved. One thing that I do is add in a little hot water from our tea kettle to the sugar, just enough to dissolve it. Once it's dissolved I add in cool water so the nectar won't be too hot and can go right in the feeder. You can make a big batch and store the excess in your refrigerator for up to two weeks.

Remember to keep the nectar in the feeder fresh. If you feeder is in direct sun, change the nectar every two days. If it's in the shade, change it every five days. If the nectar looks cloudy or if you see black on the inside of the feeder or around the feeder points--clean the feeder and change the nectar. A clean feeder is essential.

If the idea of keeping a feeder clean is daunting, use flowers to attract hummingbirds instead.

http://youtu.be/JhTSjgwKzUo

Altimira Oriole At Black Oil Sunflower Feeder

Orioles are not birds that one typically associate with being seed eaters but this Altimira oriole at Bentsen Rio Grande State Park certainly seemed to dig them.  Most of us think of orioles as nectar, fruit and jelly feeder birds but I've seen them sample seed and suet when Baltimore orioles arrive up in Minnesota and Wisconsin in early spring during a cold snap.  This bird had ample access to a suet log (at least until a chachalaca took over the feeder).

I didn't think orioles had a beak strong enough to crack open sunflower shells but I suspect that this bird found a few hulled sunflowers left behind by started red-winged blackbirds.  Interesting feeding behavior to witness.

Speaking of Altimira orioles, does anyone else think their nests resemble a certain anatomical feature on a 70ish year old man?

Random Catbird

This gray catbird has taken to the suet plugs at the feeder in a big way. It's one of two catbirds (presumably a pair) that have decided the peanut suet dough in the woodpecker log is the best thing ever.  Hope they bring their fledglings too.

Warblers Eating Honey

I'm in a quandary with my beehives and my love of birds.

On my way out to the Horicon Marsh Bird Festival, I stopped at Mr. Neil's for a quick check of our new beehives and some birding.  The warblers have arrived and the cool weather has forced those who arrive early in migration to search for alternate sources of food.  Yellow-rumped warblers like these would prefer insects.  Far too cool and far too few available, so the enterprising early migrants explored the bird feeders.

Despite the fact that Baltimore orioles are in the area and singing, none came to the feeders.  Yellow-rumps gladly took advantage of the grape jelly.

The warblers even jockeyed for position at the suet feeder among the four species of woodpecker that normally feed here.

Pine warblers are also hitting the feeders.  Whereas the yellow-rumps go for the suet and jelly, the pine goes for sunflower hearts.  It will also go for the suet, but seems content to eat the seeds.

While I was working around the garage, I noticed Neil's groundskeeper Hans had put out some old bee frames.  We do this so the bees from active hives will fly in and clean out the old honey.  These frames were from the hives that died over the winter.  The bees found it.  While I was working around the garage, I noticed warbles hanging out in the area.  At first, I thought the warblers were after the live bees and even said allowed, "I know you're desperate for insects, but you're far too small for eating bees."

Then, right about dusk when the honeybees were all tucked in their hives for the day, I noticed the warblers on the frames, pecking at them.  The light was dim but thanks to the auto timer on my Nikon D40 I was able to digiscope a Nashville warbler and a yellow-rumped warbler on the frames.

Based on the holes in the frame it looked like the warblers were going for dead bees.  Some of the frames had capped larvae that never hatched, so I figured the warblers were after the protein of old squishy non-hatched larvae.  We had more frames of dead larvae and honey in the garage so I set more out.  I figured the warblers could clean out the larvae and the bees could clean out the honey and help get a head start on their hives for the season.

The next morning when I went out for some birding, I checked the frames, they were covered in warblers.  Above are two yellow-rumped warblers and one Nashville warbler.  These were a small cross-section of about two dozen warblers waiting in line to feed off of my old beehive frames.  There were at least four species in the flock, the above two and pine warblers and orange-crowned.  I didn't get photos of the other two species, but got plenty of shots of the feeding frenzy.

Here are four warblers on one frame.  As I took pictures and watched them feed, it became clear that old bee larvae was not the only sustenance they were after.  They were very certainly eating honey.  I had a moment of panic...should birds be eating honey?  Honeybees are a fairly new species to North America, they came over with the early settlers.  Warblers did not evolve with honeybees.  Could they safely process honey and still migrate?

As I watched them I noticed that they tugged and chipped at wax foundation too.  Is that safe?  I've seen honeybees that have built comb out in the open on a bare branch, I remember seeing some abandon ones in Arizona and Texas...perhaps warblers have had exposure to this.

The air was so cold and their food scarce, I didn't want to take this source of food away if they were still trying to load up for their journey north.  I couldn't find anything about it on the Internet other than not using honey as a means to make nectar.  I wanted to plant myself in front of the frames all day long see how many species of warbler would come in but I had to go.

I also noted that as the sun got higher in the sky and our honeybees became more active, the bees didn't tolerate the warblers in close proximity and chased them off.  A few warblers still came in for the bounty but not four on a frame like at dawn.

I'm not sure if this is a good thing but if the warblers figured honey out, no doubt other birds will and I don't know if they should.  We already had one casualty of a tufted titmouse getting covered in honey while it explored some of our dead beehives.  I'm going to have to seek out an avian nutritionist to find out if this is a safe thing to offer birds.  If it is, this may be a new way to enjoy birds and bees and a new product to offer at bird stores.

Random Red-bellied Woodpecker

Male red-bellied woodpecker coming in for some suet dough.

Siskins Are Moving

I went out to Mr. Neil's yesterday to deal with some of our beehives that died over the winter (it was a hard winter, lots of beekeepers lost hives, it's part of the hobby). While walking around outside, I could hear titmice singing territory song and then I heard a golden-crowned kinglet.

I looked out the window and among the goldfinches noticed someone a little streaky.

It was a pine siskin!  Some winters, we get tons and tons of siskins that show up, but this winter we didn't see very many pine siskins at all. I was glad to see this one siskin and thought it strange that it was alone--you generally get a buttload of siskins, not just one or two.

I looked out the window five minutes later and the number of siskins outnumbered the goldfinches.  I went outside and the trees were full of them, their chipping and trilling took over the chorus of other birds.  Here's a link to what they sound like--does that sound familiar?  Have you heard that in your yard?

I think this is definitely a sign that spring is on its way--even up there in the northern states (finally).  Between the kinglet and the large siskin flock, these are birds moving north.  Can red-winged blackbirds be far behind for me?  Watch for these finches at your feeder, you'll notice them from goldfinches by their extreme streaky plumage.  They love Nyjer (aka thistle) and above the birds are eating sunflower seeds.

My Great Backyard Bird Count 2011

The Great Backyard Bird Count was over the weekend and normally for bird county things I like to do it at Mr. Neil's because he gets better birds at his home than I do.  But I never cease to be amazed at what I can attract with some sensible bird feeding choices out of my very urban apartment.

My first day on the count wasn't all that.  Oh sure, I had these lovely house finches, but I didn't see any of the hoped for winter birds for my hood like robins, Cooper's hawks or chickadees--not that I don't appreciate that pretty pink of male house finches (I love you boys, really I do).

I was starting to think that all I was going to get on my Wingscapes Camera and on the count were non native species like the above starlings until that blue jay photobombed them.  Even the house finches are somewhat non native (western species introduced to New York in the 1940s and they gradually worked their way east). But then, Saturday morning I noticed that my news alerts were saying my town was under a Winter Storm Warning.

And snow hit like crazy on Sunday. I had to laugh when I was filling out the form on the Great Backyard Bird Count site.  You had to fill in out much snow you had.  I was trying to calculate what we had because we had 61 inches on the ground, but last week we hit 45 degrees and some melted.  Fortunately, the highest total was 24 inches or above.  Even with the melt, we had at least 30 inches. Then 12 more fell on Sunday.

This is from one of the beaches off of Lake Calhoun...where's the horizon???  The frozen lake and the sky were the same color!  It was a bleak horizon on Sunday.  Fortunately, that changed the game for how many birds that came to my apartment window.

The chickadees and downy woodpeckers came back in spades.  They had to fight their way through some pigeons and starlings, but these hard urban residents were able to hold their own.

Everybody was digging the peanut suet. I have some in a suet log that's outside of the view of the camera, but I slathered some on the wall and sprinkled a few chunks on my window ledge.  In the above photo, the female cardinal has a huge chunk of suet in her beak and the white-breasted nuthatch was working on the patch of suet I stuck to the wall.

I had to chuckle at some of the photos the Wingscapes camera picked up. This house finch was trying to beat the starlings to the last remnants of the suet on the wall.  I didn't even know they would go for suet.

All in all, we had 14 species show up which isn't bad for how urban an area our apartment is located in.

And now that the count is over, I have to figure out how to deal with another 15 inches of snow dealt to us (no doubt by some vengeance seeking groundhog). I keep reminding myself that this time next month, I may find myself sitting in a cool field of freshly melted snow listening for the "peent" of displaying woodcocks.

Great Backyard Bird Count #gbbc #birding

Here is a friendly neighborhood tree sparrow reminding you that today is the start of the Great Backyard Bird Count.  This is YOUR chance to take 15 minutes day over the next four days to note what birds and how many of each you see.  This is a joint project with Audubon and Cornell Lab.  Please consider taking a moment to help get a cross section of winter birds in your yard.

Even if you do not have a bird feed, this is something you can do.  Maybe you have robins foraging in mud in your yard--that counts.  Maybe you notice a flock of 6 crows fly over your yard--that counts.  Maybe you have pigeons roosting on a neighbor's roof--that counts.

Even the most common birds count.  It helps in the long run to get an idea of prey base for raptors or population trends for common birds.  We especially need a good base on the off chance bird populations may drop in the future.  Fifteen minutes day. That's drinking a cup of coffee to note what's in your yard.  Give it go, won't you?

If you want to follow it on Twitter, I believe the hashtag is #GBBC.